On mass scenes’ organization principles in Dostoevsky's works: theatrical effectiveness or romantic tradition?

The study of the plot in Dostoevsky’s novels makes it evident that there is more than just one culmination. This feature is inherent to all complex genres where actions develop over a long period of time. This fact is explained by a number of moments where emotional tension dramatically increases. Dostoevsky himself tries to represent such moments as points of bifurcation: they are mass scenes that result in a succession of scandals. Dostoevsky tends to be interested mostly in spectacular and impressive mass scenes. Such tradition of action organization goes back to the genre of drama and - more precisely - to the French romantic drama. Trying to depict characters in the state of emotional crisis at the moment of extreme psychological tension, Dostoevsky follows Hugo’s tradition and creates melodramatic scenes with affected poses and gestures. Interpersonal relations between characters become more complicated and contradictory and a lot more personages are involved in Dostoevsky’s mise-en-scènes. At the same time, the author’s comments are minimal, unlike Hugo’s drama. The article is concerned with dramatic actions in the works of Dostoevsky and Hugo and focuses on the similarities in the scenes characterized by the same organizing principle: a dramatic motif - its unexpected resolution. Such dominance of dramatic elements leads to a specific plot of nonlinear character, which is organized from a set of dramatic scenes with highly varying patterns of characters.